A custom add-on that delivers NES optical data storage via a real IDE CD drive has been built by the maker known as Throaty Mumbo, giving the front-loading Nintendo Entertainment System a slice of the disc-based future it never officially received. The project is accompanied by a demonstration video, and the whole thing is rather more involved than simply bolting a drive to the side of the console.
Why NES Optical Data Storage Was Always Going to Be a Fight
The NES is not a machine that takes kindly to being pushed. Its hardware is constrained in ways that make the project genuinely tricky, even before you consider that optical media arrived commercially well after the console’s heyday. The concept of a CD add-on for a Nintendo machine is not entirely without precedent, of course. The SNES came remarkably close to receiving one through a collaboration that ultimately fell apart, and the N64 doubled down on cartridges entirely, leaving disc-based gaming to the competition. Throaty Mumbo originally planned to recreate something closer to that SNES prototype, but settled on the NES instead, reasoning it would be more fun.
The front-loading NES does have one thing going for it: a mostly unused expansion slot on its underside. That port becomes the entry point for the entire audio side of this build, with the system’s audio mix input pin receiving audio samples from the custom hardware. Power also flows through the expansion connector, keeping the cabling relatively tidy.
Custom PCB, RP2350B, and the Everdrive N8 Pro
The heart of the build is a custom printed circuit board housing an Raspberry Pi RP2350B microcontroller, which takes on the considerable job of sitting between an Everdrive N8 Pro cartridge and an IDE CD drive. When the system boots, the RP2350B reads the game ROM directly off the CD and streams it over USB to the Everdrive, which the NES then runs as it would any other cartridge. It is a neat solution to the fundamental problem: the NES has no native means of talking to optical media, so the microcontroller does the translation work entirely.
Audio is handled by a PCM5102 audio DAC on the same board, which routes CD audio through the expansion port’s mix input. The result is that the NES receives both the game data and the audio from the disc, with the DAC smoothing out the digital audio into something the console’s analogue circuitry can work with. It is not a trivial chain of components, and the fact that the expansion port carries so much of the load is a reminder of how much thought went into that connector’s original design, even if Nintendo never fully exploited it commercially.
The build sits within a wider context of renewed activity around the NES. Throaty Mumbo is also responsible for reviving the long-defunct Japanese online service for the console, a separate project that brought a piece of 1980s network infrastructure back to life for modern enthusiasts. Between that and this CD drive add-on, there is a genuine momentum to the work being done around a console that many assumed had been fully explored decades ago.
Optical media changed console gaming permanently when it arrived in earnest. Dozens of megabytes of cartridge storage gave way to disc capacities that, for the games of the era, were effectively limitless. The NES never got to live in that world officially. Thanks to the RP2350B sitting inside this custom PCB, it at least gets a taste of it now, disc swapping and all.
